


The chance to set things right

by thyandra



Series: Two-years Anniversary Fanfiction Giveaway [7]
Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Child Abuse, Child Neglect, De-Aged Kaneki Ken, F/M, Gen, This takes place when Kaneki is about 5, Time Travel Fix-It, You get the drill this story is about Kaneki's childhood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-04
Updated: 2017-05-04
Packaged: 2018-10-28 03:14:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10822575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thyandra/pseuds/thyandra
Summary: Time travelling Touka finds hersef stuck in the past and takes it upon herself to set things right.Or: the road to hell is paved with good intentions.[Please read the tags]





	The chance to set things right

**Author's Note:**

> it never sit right with me how Touka never knew about Kaneki’s family situation during his childhood, so I went ahead and chose those two for this AU. Also: please bear in mind that Kaneki is, like, 5 in this fic. Touka’s feelings towards him after the time travel are merely platonic. 
> 
> As a side note, I still don’t know whether or not I’ll be continuing filling prompts from now on. I finished this because I had already written a draft for it. Whether I’ll drop the giveaway project or not really depends on how well this fic will be received. Comments do make the difference.

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Touka hid the fourth yawn of that evening behind her palm and rubbed at her eyes tiredly. Maybe she should’ve listened to Yomo and closed the shop for the day, but she knew she wouldn’t have been able to rest anyway. Not with the worry weighing her heart the longer she was left waiting for the guys to come back from the lab mission. She knew that anything could have gone wrong anytime in the search for those RC suppressants, and she was accustomed to the helpless dread that waiting for Kaneki to come back to her always left her feeling, but another part of her, the selfless part of her that loved him with every fiber of her being, knew that this was important to him. So however much she despised sitting idly when he was risking his life out there, she knew she had to let him do it just this once. She had to let him go be a saviour, because she understood that he wouldn’t let his own salvation come before anyone else’s. **  
**

_It’s different now_ , she reminded herself. _He has a reason to come back this time. I made sure that he knows_.

_I_ really _hope that he knows_.

She glanced at the clock and realized it was time to close the shop up, so she stood to flip over the “open” sign on the door. She smiled a little to herself as she pulled the sandwich board sign inside and took a look at the clear sky.

He knew there was a door in the back of the shop that would always be open for him, ready to welcome him back home.

_Just don’t make me worry more than necessary, alright?_

After she closed the register and made sure that everything was in place, her eyes fell on the bookshelves stacked with new arrivals and recent donations from their customers, and her gaze became nostalgic.

_He would be happy about that, wouldn’t he? He always loved the sight of a happy bookshelf._

She got closer to inspect it, feeling particularly sentimental, when a thought struck her. Maybe a book would help her relax before bedtime. She sure needed the rest, she thought, so maybe a literature book would do the trick. It would certainly bore her enough to lull her to sleep, she mused with a smile.

Her gaze fell on what looked like a children’s fairy tale book, and for a moment she wondered how it could have ended up there, but when she examined the title on the spine, _Urashima Tarō and other stories_ , she was hit with a sudden memory, her eyes growing distant. She could still picture how young and happier Kaneki had looked back then, cradling a worn looking, well-loved copy of the _Man'yōshū_ between his fingers, and she was reminded with inexplicable sadness of the soft smile that had graced his lips as his eyes raked over the page, sinking into his own world of ancient poetry and elegant, difficult words.

It was a world that had always been his and his alone, one where Touka would never be able to follow, but she’d never minded much anyway. She’d always thought it must have been lonely, but he seemed content enough, and she’d eventually conceded that anything that could make him smile like that, like the world hadn’t lost its light yet, was worth a chance. Maybe one day she’d be able to make him smile like that, too. Maybe one day he’d feel less lonely.

She picked up the book from the library and smiled a little to herself.

_It can’t hurt to try, right? It can’t get any lonelier than this anyway_.

Maybe one day she’d come to understand him fully.

 

 

***

 

 

She fell asleep with the book laying face down on her belly and her lamp still turned on. Her heavy eyelids fluttered as she sank down, down in the deep blue sea, all the way to the Ryūjin’s enormous palace. In her dreams, she thought she saw a turtle wink. Did turtles even wink at all? She didn’t know, but that seemed unimportant now. She was happy there, at the bottom of the sea. It would be nice, she thought, having a glimpse at the world 300 years from now, too.

She wondered if maybe, by then, it would be a better place for humans and ghouls alike.

 

 

***

 

 

She woke up with an uncomfortable crick in her neck from where she’d fallen asleep in a seated position, her back propped up by a pile of pillows. She went to rub it with a groan, when the book that had miraculously helped her find a bit of rest, if only for a couple of hours, fell with a thump on the floor. She picked it up and eyed it with gratitude, before getting up and stretching, to ready herself for a new day. She’d need a good cup of coffee before she ventured into :re to resume her game of worrying and waiting, but today she wasn’t feeling quite as queasy as the day before. That was another plus of being well rested, wasn’t it? Problems don’t look quite as big and imposing when you’re not running on caffeine to indulge your anxiety-induced stress. Her own experience with school, if not the countless hours of his shift that Nishiki spent bent over a textbook during finals week instead of working, should’ve taught her as much.

“Jeez, when did I become as pathetic as four-eyes?” she muttered to herself with a grimace, grabbing her keys on her way to the door.

_I’ll get premature wrinkles if this goes on_.

 

 

***

 

 

Something was off.

She had a nagging feeling at the back of her mind that something was out of place but she didn’t realize what until she reached the place where the :re café should have been and found a construction site instead.

Bewildered, she glanced around in a desperate attempt at finding some sort of explanation for the sudden disappearance of her workplace.

_Surely if a whole building vanishes overnight people are bound to notice, right?_

As absurd as that sounded, that didn’t seem to be the case. Of the few early risers littering the street, a couple students, a man walking a dog and a lone figure on a morning run rounding the corner, no one seemed to even be glancing in her direction, let alone looking as distressed as her by the latest discrepancy in the landscape of the city.

_Am I still dreaming or what._

Now that she was paying attention, though, she could see all the other alterations all around her, and it was with a deep sense of vertigo that she noticed that the bookstore half a block away had turned into a conbini, that the bakery across the road had a different sign and that the access to the subway they built last year directly across from the post office was nowhere in sight.

_What the hell is happening?_

_Did I stumble upon an alternate reality?_

Panic soon replaced her bewilderment.

_No, what am I saying, I’m not some fancy character in a sci-fi story, for fuck’s sake. There needs to be a rational explanation for this._

There had to, right? Stuff like that only happened in movies, and she wasn’t even one of those nerdy types who enjoyed it. There was no way this could be happening to her, then.

_Right?_

She needed to make sure that this wasn’t a dream. Yeah, focusing on something other than her sudden queasiness would be nice. Amazing. Fantastic.

_Alright, let’s do this. Deep breaths_.

She decided that the first thing she needed to make sure of was that this wasn’t the only place that had changed. Maybe collecting more info about what kind of weird reality she’d ended up in would give her a clue about what was happening, and hopefully also a way to get back to normal. She didn’t fancy being stuck feeling like she’d gone nuts.

Maybe it had been the same nostalgia from the day before that brought her back to the 20th Ward, or maybe it was just the desire to get away from what inexplicably felt like a painful reminder of how she’d lost everything, including a part of herself, when Anteiku had been burned down to a pile of ashes, debris and a whole lot of heartache and regrets. Either way, her heart was beating like crazy inside her chest, the erratic _thu-thump_ resonating in her ears even as she finally reached the familiar grounds of her ex high-school, and slumped on her knees out of pure relief.

_It isn’t all gone_.

The places that held so many memories and so much hope hadn’t been completely snatched away from her.

She almost cried right then and there, not having realized just how much that fear had shaken her until it had disappeared.

Feeling more reassured but still at a loss as to what to do now that she’d gotten back to having no idea what was happening, she wandered aimlessly through the streets. A thousand thoughts and a hundred more worries were piling on the tip of her tongue, and before she knew it, she’d lost track of time. The sun was low on the horizon, which meant it had to be late afternoon. Well, having apparently walked for hours on end at least explained why her feet hurt.

_I’m definitely losing my mind_ , she thought.

The worst part was, she had no one to vent them to. Would Yomo still exist in this reality? Would he pick up his phone if she called, like, now? She hastily checked her pockets.

Shit. She’d left her phone at home. Of all days to be forgetful…

Her reveries were interrupted by the sudden cry of a few kids playing. She looked up and noted that she’d gotten to Hinami’s favourite playground. Ah. Maybe, with some luck, she’d find her here, finishing that novel she was so excited about. Touka could really use some company right now.

“Don’t get near him.”

She was so caught in her thoughts that she only noticed what was going on because of the sharp cut of the boy’s voice. A warning. Touka looked up in time to see said kid tugging on the sleeve of his companion to force her to stand back.

“Why?” she heard her ask.

Why indeed. A few yards away, a child was quietly amassing sand near his lap with the sole help of his little chubby hands. All thoughts of alternate realities and bad sci-fi movies thrown aside, Touka took a moment to just look curiously at him. He seemed harmless enough, and if he was aware of the kids talking about him behind his back, he didn’t show it.

Touka briefly wondered if he was a ghoul. The scenario brought back memories, even though Ayato had been way chubbier at that age, and she a lot less shy. Kids could be assholes. She would know.

“He’s weird,” the boy supplied, still in low tones. “He’s always by himself. I asked him to play once, and he said his mommy wouldn’t want for him to come back late. He’s a liar, though. I know he stayed there long after I left.”

“How do you know?”

“I saw him on my way back from nana’s after family dinner. Still in the same spot, building a sandcastle.”

The little girl shrugged, apparently satisfied by this information, and scurried off to the nearest swing with the boy in tow.

Ghoul or not, Touka felt like she needed to intervene. She knew a thing or two about loneliness, and no kid that age deserved to have no friends. She got closer to the child, trying her best to look as nonthreatening as possible for an adult in a playground, and cleared her throat. Now that she’d gotten closer, he looked oddly familiar.

“That’s a nice sandcastle, kiddo,” she said by way of greeting.

The kid looked up and gave a small self-conscious smile. “Thank you, onee-san.”

“Did you build it all by yourself?”

He nodded shyly.

“That’s impressive,” Touka praised, crouching down to his level to get a better look.

The kid looked flustered at the attention, as though he didn’t know what he was expected to do. “Do you think so?” he said, dubiously. But if the light that had briefly animated his dull gray eyes was any indication, she could take a guess as for what he expected of her. “It doesn’t look as pretty as in the book, though.”

Ah, so he was the nerdy type, too, uh? She could do this. She had the necessary experience for it at the very least.

“What book?” she asked politely, putting her hand under her chin and looking for all intents and purposes as though her whole plan for the day was to come here and have this conversation with a kid she’d never seen before. It wasn’t, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t arrange it to be. She didn’t have anywhere else to be, anyway. Not with her morning shift gone-

She had almost managed to get back off-track despite her good intentions when the child all but put a book under her nose, pointing excitedly at a colored figure. “This one! Look!”

Touka looked. It was, indeed, a castle. A pretty elaborate one, with turrets and arcs and long windows. The kind you see in fairytale books like the one currently centimeters away from her face.

She smiled and made it a show to look back and forth between the sand castle and its painted counterpart. “Yours looks much prettier than this pink thing to me.”

The child blushed and looked away. “But it isn’t as high!” he protested.

“So?” Touka asked, unimpressed by this piece of criticism. “Neither are you, kiddo.”

The kid didn’t seem to have heard her. “I promised I’d show mum a really high castle,” he muttered sadly to himself.

Touka rose back to her feet and glanced around, looking for signs of other adults in the near vicinity. She noticed that the other two kids had gone away somewhere during her impromptu meeting of the lonely child. No one else was in sight.

“Where are your parents anyway? Did you come here alone?”

She glanced down just in time to see the boy freeze. “Mum is still at work,” he hedged.

Alright, the mom topic was a touchy one. She should’ve guessed from what she’d overheard from the other children that she wouldn’t be an option. But she was starting to get worried. This wasn’t a ghoul child. He had no way to defend himself. What parent was okay with leaving their kids alone and unsupervised for such long stretches of time? She’d been here for a while now, and judging by the height of the sandcastle, he’d been here for even longer.

“How about your dad?”

This seemed to make him shrink back from her even more.

“It’s just my mum and I now,” he said with no particular inflection, resuming his task of piling sand between his hands.

Touka felt a pang of sympathy. Yeah, she knew what that was like, too. She sighed, taking a seat next to him. She gathered sand in her palm. “I’m sorry,” she said at last, staring at it with a detached sort of fascination as she then let it slip through her open fingers. “I lost my daddy too, when I was a kid. I was a bit older than you. Hurt like he– er, it hurt a lot. Still does. I’m sorry for bringing it up.”

The kid was looking at her now with an undecipherable glint in his eyes. “Did he look as pretty as you, onee-san?”

Touka was oddly touched by the child’s innocence and was about to say so, before he went back to patting the sand again in what Touka was beginning to fear was a coping mechanism, and added: “I don’t feel sad. Mommy does, but it’s okay because I’m still here.”

“Oh.” She didn’t know what to make of that.

“Mommy shouldn’t be sad. I like her smile best.” Encouraged by his own boldness, the child went on, a smile of his own forming on his lips. “She is amazing. She always works real hard all the time.” Here he paused for a second and put a hand to his chin.

The large sleeve of his t-shirt lowered enough with the movement to show a sliver of bruised skin, but she was so captured by her own surprise that she didn’t even notice at first.

She had frozen as soon as she’d recognized the gesture.

“She’s so good to me,” the kid continued. “I want to be as hardworking and beautiful as her when I grow up.”

At a loss for what to say, she stood still and stared. Now that she was thinking about him, she could see that the resemblance to Kaneki was striking. Enough so that she wondered how she hadn’t realized it sooner. Her stomach churning, she looked away. Of all days for fate to play a twist on her… This had to be some kind of joke.

It was probably just a coincidence, wasn’t it? It didn’t make sense.

Except that the whole reality she was living in didn’t appear to make any more sense either, and the sudden absence of her very solid and real coffee shop from where it’d always been for _more than three years_ –

_Wait. What if…?_

No, she couldn’t be seriously considering this. It was just thanks to the story she’d read the night before that she was even entertaining the possibility of time travel–

_… The night before._

Which was exactly the moment everything turned to shit.

_It can’t be._

_No, no, no–_

“Onee-san, are you okay?”

She had to know. She felt like she was going mad the longer she shied away from that simple question, but she couldn’t bring herself to ask. She was terrified of being right. But then she noticed the arm awkwardly extended to her face, hovering there as if unsure what to do, and with it the tiny, thin wrist with purple bruises blooming through his pale skin, spreading too wide for it to have been a domestic accident or a bump on a door.

For the second time in a matter of minutes, she felt her blood freeze in her veins.

“Hey, kid,” she said, her voice trembling slightly. “What’s your name?”

He seemed too relieved to find out she wasn’t about to pass out to consider the dangers of not trusting strangers, not that it wasn’t too late for that by now. “Kaneki Ken,” he said, and Touka stopped breathing.

“You’re kidding me,” she whispered.

 

 

***

 

 

She didn’t know what force propelled her through the walk back from the playground to her apartment, because now that she was there, the door closed safely behind her trembling back, her legs felt like jelly.

She collapsed to her knees.

_Why did I run away?_

_What am I supposed to do now?_

She took her head in her hands and kept asking herself that until the questions stopped making any sense.

 

 

***

 

 

The following day she came back to the playground, looking for a head of black hair and an oversized t-shirt.

He didn’t seem to be anywhere in sight today, but she was determined to wait until he showed up. She had brought cookies as a peace offering for having left before making sure he made it home safely the day before, and she felt shitty at the thought that maybe she’d have to wait _days_ before he came back. It didn’t help that she didn’t know in which neighborhood he lived.

What had helped, though, was buying a newspaper on her way to the bakery, because the date on it had finally made her accept the fact that she had indeed time travelled.

Well, ‘accept’ was a big word, anyway. ‘Acknowledged’ was a better term for the mass of unsorted feelings still tangling in her chest. She had tried not to think about the fact that there was probably a younger version of herself somewhere in this reality too, one with her father still very much alive at her side. She’d also tried not to be jealous of her own past self, to no avail. It was merely the thought that she wouldn’t have helped her father’s grief if she showed up unannounced on their doorstep, now that she was the spitting image of her late mother in her younger days, that stopped her from doing exactly that. But that knowledge didn’t make it hurt any less. He was there, at a hand’s grasp, and he was still slipping through her fingers just like sand on an open palm.

Well, she reasoned with a deep breath. One thing at a time. I have to sort _this_ before I can get to _that_ , don’t I?

She glanced at the small package of sweets in her lap. It wasn’t like she had any frame of reference to determine if her gift would be well-received since all human food tasted like arse to her, but Yoriko had said once that all kids liked cookies, so she thought that they would be a safe bet.

By some stretch of luck, she didn’t have to wait long. It was barely 4, half an hour since she came here, when she spotted his lonely figure making his way to the sand box.

She got to her feet in a moment, and called out a greeting. “Hey, kiddo.” It still felt weird to call him Kaneki, even though she rationally knew it was still him. But she had to compartmentalize, if she wanted to get out of this with her sanity of mind, and she was already balancing on the edge of a slim rope. “Sorry I had to get out in a hurry yesterday. But I brought you a present. Well, two, actually, if you want to accept them.”

He seemed taken aback at this news, so she just offered the cookies. “Here. Have some,” she said, then she joined him in the square full of sand and started piling up her sand.

He didn’t take any cookies. Touka looked up at him after a while and noted how stiff his posture was, and how he was avoiding her gaze.

“Cat got your tongue?” she joked, and if possible, he stiffened even more.

_What’s happening?_

_What did I do wrong?_

“Hey,” she tried again, her voice softening until it was barely a whisper. “I didn’t want to make it weird. ” She gestured at herself and at her gardening utensils she’d brought with, pausing in her castle-building. “Does it make you uncomfortable if we share the box?”

After a few seconds he shook his head no.

“Did I do something wrong?”

He shook his head no more vehemently and started looking around as if trying to find a way out of this conversation.

Touka sighed. “Ok. I’m gonna go over there to read for a bit. You can come and tell me if I did something wrong when you feel ready, ok? I promise I won’t get mad.”

He gave her a forced smile and she rose to her feet, doing as she said.

“Onee-san,” he called in a small voice after her back, sounding troubled.

She turned around and gave him a puzzled look. “You can call me Touka. That’s my name. It seems only fair after you’ve told me yours, right?”

“Er… Touka-san.”

She smiled. “Yes?”

“You forgot your stuff. And your biscuits.”

Her smile grew. “They’re for you,” she reminded him. “I told you that I brought you a present, right?”

He still seemed a bit on edge, so she explained. “It’s easier to build an higher castle with good utensils, and the food is to give you strength back for when you’ll get hungry.”

He didn’t reply, so she cracked open her book and sat down on a bench.

When she finished the chapter she was on and she looked up, she found that he’d finally accepted the gift, and was pushing one particularly large cookie into his mouth.

The castle he built that day was bigger than the one from the day before.

 

 

***

 

 

Over the course of the last few weeks, she’d taken to visit the small playground every couple of days, enough so that Kaneki had gotten used to her presence there, and started to open up even more. In turn, she’d taken to tell him stories from his future. Or, the future they’d share if she didn’t mess with their timeline. She even made it a point to call him by his name, both aloud and in her head.

She was getting better at this, whatever ‘this’ was.

If she was sure about one thing, it was that she didn’t want for little Ken’s future to go the way she remembered.

“But why did Onii-san leave you if he loved you? I don’t get it.”

_Neither did I back then_. “He said he wanted to protect me.”

“From what?”

_Himself, I think_. “Sometimes, even when you love someone a lot, you still end up hurting them. He didn’t mean to, but he did.”

A look of understanding finally dawned on him, and Touka tried not to think of why this would be the kind of perspective he could relate to the most. The bruises on his arms had finally healed, but she knew that new ones were probably hiding underneath his new ill-fitting shirt. The way he seemed to avoid crouching positions today made her suspect his ribs or lower stomach.

She was so, so afraid that asking him directly about it would shatter the idyllic picture she’d worked so hard to create, and she didn’t want for him to lose however small of a safe place this tiny playground represented to him.

But he _trusts_ you, another voice in her conscience reminded her. You can’t just sit here and do nothing.

She took a deep breath, realizing she needed to do this for his own good, no matter how painful it would be. In the long run, he would learn that this was the only option.

“Kaneki,” she began, then paused. What was the best way to ask if his mother did unnameable things to her child? What was the best way to make it easier for him to see her as the monster Touka knew she was? He always spoke so highly of her, every time she was mentioned in passing.

He always did so with a fake smile that would’ve fooled anyone but her. She was too accustomed to sensing his lies and knowing where to look for the signs of his half-truths.

“That doesn’t mean it’s okay to hurt someone, though,” she finally decided to say, continuing from her previous tale. She chanced a glance at his face to gauge his reaction and saw that he’d completely closed-off, his face a mask, his posture rigid and a tight, fake smile already in place. That was enough of a proof that she’d been right in her worry.

She decided she’d call the authorities first thing as soon as she got home tonight. Even if her suspect of physical abuse ended up leading nowhere, she had worked out enough from what little he told her over the course of those painfully long weeks that she knew about the neglect, too, if the countless hours spent by himself and the ratty clothes alone weren’t enough of a warning sign.

With a sinking heart, she realized that she was about to destroy his whole world. No matter the circumstances, she was still separating a little child from his mum. She didn’t know if he’d ever forgive her for that.

She didn’t know if she would, in his place. Wasn’t she a hypocrite after all? Not that long ago she’d cried to this same child about how much it hurt for her to grow up without her father; it seemed to make all the difference that she’d avoided to mention how he wasn’t a spotless moral role model, either, let alone how hard that loss had impacted her, growing up. Fear of abandonment wasn’t an easy thing to move on from.

And yet, she was about to inflict him a similar fate.

_It’s for his own good_ , she reminded himself. _He might think that he’s happy right now, but you know better than that._

She could only hope she wasn’t going to make him even more unhappy.

 

 

***

 

 

The day after she’d anonymously called the child abuse hotline and given them Kaneki’s mom’s name, the playground was deserted.

So was it the day after that.

Touka held the child’s book she’d brought for him close to her chest and tried hard not to cry.

 

 

***

 

 

A week after that there was still no trace of Kaneki, and she was starting to get worried, before she realized the fault in that reasoning. If he didn’t come here anymore it had to mean that his new family was a much healthier one, right?

 

 

***

 

 

Three weeks after that and she’d finally worked out the courage to solve the _other_ issue.

Her take was that if time hadn’t reversed back yet, it had to mean that she still had something to fix here, so after she failed to get in contact with Kaneki, she decided she needed to tempt fate just one more time.

At first she thought about writing him a letter. But then she pushed that possibility aside, because no sane person would believe such a nonsensical thing as time travel. Let alone that their own only daughter came back from the future to give you a warning.

Feeling foolish, she knocked on the door of Arata’s old flat.

She could only hope for the best.

 

 

***

 

 

Two months later, she was still stuck in this alternate reality with growing anxieties weighing on her heart. After her first visit to her dad’s, she decided it would be best for both if she didn’t come anymore. She wasn’t sure she’d have the strength to go back to her own timeline, if she did.

That was, if she _still_ had a way to go back. Now that was a nice thought to put on top of her other worries…

Shit. She was slowly falling apart, wasn’t she?

She didn’t know what possessed her to go back to the playground after all this time, nor why the sight of the still swing gave a bit of relief to her aching heart, but it did. Maybe she was really losing it.

She closed her eyes and willed her thoughts to just shut the fuck up. She was so tired.

“Touka-san?”

She knew that voice. She cracked one eye open and then did a double take.

“Kaneki!”

He seemed as surprised as her to see the other here.

“Haven’t seen you in a while,” she said at last.

She didn’t miss the sadness that crossed his eyes at that, nor the way he suddenly avoided her gaze and made himself look smaller. “A lot happened.”

She tried not to think of the worst. She really tried, but the fact that he was here again, alone, with his old clothes, didn’t bode all that well. “Wanna talk about it?”

“Not really.”

She took a deep breath and tried to calm her racing heart. Okay. This didn’t mean anything. There was no way to tell if he was in any worse condition than he was before, so it was no use worrying herself sick before she made sure. Deep breaths. She could make him talk. She knew she could. She had done so the first time and she could do it again, if he needed her to.

“Do you feel up for an adventure? We could climb the slide from the bottom up and time it. If you beat me I’m going to buy you ice cream.”

He still wasn’t looking her way. “Can I just sit here for a while, Onee-san?”

“Of couse,” she said, and opened her arms wide in a silent invitation for a hug. He hesitated for a bit, but it was only when he took a seat next to her and melted against her side that she really understood how much tension he was holding in his tiny shoulders. The moment she wrapped her arm around them, it was as if a dam had been broken, and the emotions barely kept under control flew out without filter.

_Shit_.

She cursed herself because she couldn’t do anything more than hold him close as he sobbed his heart out. “Shh, you’re okay now,” she mumbled in his hair, pulling him even closer and trying to reassure him with her sole presence.

How bad was it if such a reserved kid was trusting a complete stranger with a part of himself he never let anyone see?

“T-they took her,” he said between his gasps. “They took mum away from me because she didn’t want me anymore, and my aunt doesn’t want me either–”

Touka’s stomach churned with guilt.

You betrayed him.

You knew that was what he’d take from it, and yet you still didn’t stay by his side to walk him through it. You _failed_ him.

“That’s not true,” she said, both to him and to the voice of her conscience. “Don’t say that. You know it isn’t true.”

“It is. She would never leave me with the Asaokas if she cared about me.”

_That’s the point though_ , she thought bitterly. _She never cared enough about you in the first place. Not like a mother should_.

_But it was_ me _, not her, who did this to you. What does this make me_?

She let him cry it out before she addressed what she felt was necessary to clear up. It took a while but eventually his sobs evened out in a few sporadic hiccups, and then he was quiet again. Almost too quiet, even.

She took that as her cue. She extricated him from her tight embrace and searched his eyes. “You are important to me. I want you to know that, Kaneki. Do you understand?”

New tears pooled in his eyes and she took that as an affirmative. But she wasn’t done yet.

“I have a present for you. I kept it in my purse for months and now I can finally show it to you. Do you want to see it?”

He nodded weakly, and she hesitated for just a heartbeat before pulling out the book that had started this whole alternate reality. She’d wondered for a while if this was the right thing to do, and if it was true that the book had been her ticket to a (admittedly unplanned for) travel in time, maybe she shouldn’t give away her sole ticket back, but like with most decision in her life, she let her guts decide for her.

This whole mess had started with him. She felt like he had as much of a right as her to decide how it would end. She didn’t know whether she’d made the right decisions; only time would tell if she’d made things better or if she’d fucked up. But ironically, time was exactly what had been to blame in the first place.

Maybe, she realized now, her worst mistake all along, even in her original timeline, had been not to talk to him. Hah. That fate chose to repeat itself had to be the worst irony of it all. She’d done to him the same thing he did to her, hadn’t she? To protect him from hurt, she ended up hurting him more. She wondered if it wasn’t too late to fix that.

She turned to him and attempted a smile. After what felt like the biggest leap of faith of her entire life, she asked: “Do you want me to read this to you?”

“Please,” he said. She needed no further encouragement. She told herself that she had him at her side and that she understood where he came from this time around.

And so she began to read.

 

 

***

 

 

The sun set just as she turned the final page. She closed her eyes and next to her Kaneki did the same.

She didn’t know what it would be like once she opened them, but that was okay.

She’d learned from her mistakes now.

 

 

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The sun disappeared behind the horizon several years later, and a lone figure sitting on the same bench looked on as the sky faded to black. He could still remember everything. To this day, he hoped he’d never forget. She’d been there at one of the darkest hours of his life, and he was sure it had been no easy feat.

That’s why he treasured that memory the most, and made sure to show how much he’d loved her to the day, and how much he still did; how blessed he felt at having such a beautiful person in his life, and how he never wanted to give her up or let her down.

She had given him a new beginning.

Arata could only hope that in this reality he would never let himself come as close to the other ending. He owed it to his children as much as he owed it to himself.

He smiled a bit at the thought. 

As it turned out, that had been the only thing that mattered in the end: the wish to set things right. As long as he could hold on to it, he knew everything would eventually turn out okay for everyone.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on my tumblr [here](http://bloodycarnations.tumblr.com/post/160229934974/what-about-a-character-meeting-anothers-past) in honour of my two-years anniversary in this fandom.  
> I've always thought that even if someone had noticed the abuses and took Kaneki away from his mom, the situation wouldn't have improved all that much, given that his closest relatives were still the Asaokas. This fic is a result of that headcanon.  
> If you read this, please leave me a message to let me know what you thought of it. This was my first touken(ish) fic and I'm not sure I portrayed Touka as well as I would've.


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